(My smashed 2015 Fully Loaded Nissan Rogue)
It's amazing how time fly's and how drastic life can change from moment to the next. Currently I am located in typical modern boring suburban city located somewhere in South Florida with all the modern conveniences that the normal mindless robotic brainwashed American could ever wish for. This same time last year I was spending the winter months in the Alpujarra mountains in a small pueblo known as Sorvilan in Andulucia, Spain.
(The view of the Mediterranean sea taken while in Sorvilan)
How I ended up in Sorvilan is a journey in and of itself. In January 2017 I was about 2 months into my European/Moroccan journey which all started from a car accident I had driving my 2015 Nissan Rogue, which I got at a discount from the car dealership I had worked out in order to drive for Uber. According to the Finance Manger I didn't just get a deal, I rapped the dealership. Which is great for a change since its normally the dealership that's the one doing the raping.
The accident that occurred happened while I had just picked up a customer in Miami right before rush hour. At the moment my plan was 2 meet up with my boy Marcus in Toronto in order try my luck in a country not the United States and a city that wasn't Miami. The only reason I was not already in Toronto when the accident occurred was because I was waiting for Halloween to make some extra cash driving Uber before heading there.
(Just like Dustin Hoffman in the movie Rainman I too until this accident thought I was an excellent driver)
My plan was completely altered when I idiotically and blindly listened to a customer I had picked up at a BMW dealership who was screaming in my ear to turn right, turn right to get on the highway while my navigation told me to stay left. I was not a particular good mood this day, so I got nervous, hesitated and then as if some outside force took over me, I turned right without noticing the red Honda accord in my blind side. So I cracked into the Honda and damaged my axle and my ego. Thankfully no one was hurt but I was definitely shaken up, worried and deeply saddened by this turn of events. We waited 3 very long hours for the cops there report and I finally drove the car 20 plus miles home with the steering wheel in a upside down position.
The asshole customer who was yelling in my ear to turn right dipped and called another Lyft. Actually I drove for both Uber and Lyft in order to maximize my income and the accident occurred while driving for Lyft since my Uber account was frozen because I foolishly submitted a transfer to drive in Toronto. Rather then use the insurance provided by Lyft which had a $2,500 deductible I decided to use my personal insurance since the deductible was $1000. Of course I didn't tell my insurance company I was driving for Lyft at the moment and that I had another person in the vehicle.
I would have been screwed if they knew I was driving commercially even though it is technical legal to do so until you get into an accident.
Now I was left to figure out how I was going to fix this mess. In all honesty I never had planned to keep the car for more then a year even though I was financing it for 5 years. When I first returned to the states after 28 months, I never planned on purchasing another vehicle again. But I was in need of income if I was ever hoping to leave the Matrix that I hated so much once again. At this stage of my life I had worked just about every possible job and don't have a college degree which only adds to the difficulty of finding decent employment. After spending 10 years of my life working for Financial Institutions and later on Call Centers and some other shitty low paying jobs, there were not many jobs I was willing to give up my conscious and soul for.
Due to the lack of gainful opportunity, I decided to answer an add on Craigslist to become a Car Salesman Trainee at my local car dealership. So just to get by and make some income, I accepted this offer and went thru the painful bullshit training program to become a car salesman. I have always disliked car salesman and always lumped them in the same category as I would other shady characters such as Lawyers, Mechanics, Televangelist and other professions that encourage one to defraud, manipulate and toy with the emotions of others in order to profit financially from another's ignorance.
At this point I felt like I had nothing to lose, plus I was getting a guarantee $500 week salary for basically training, test driving new Nissan's, socializing with peers and customers. Not a bad deal considering all things, I looked at it as free money. I thought because I'm a good communicator that I would possibly be able to have some success without having to compromise myself and be a complete scumbag in the process.
Once out of training or actually during training it didn't take long for me to figure out how this car salesmen fantasy I was being sold really works. The reality of the auto industry is that it is no different then how the call center use people for a season and then spit them out once there threw with them and made there profit. The dealership works in the same way. Every summer, they hire a new group of sales people, they hype of this new group of naive mostly young hopeful individuals by telling you that there is so much money to be made you would have to be a complete moron not to cash in.
So while you are under this 3 month training with a guaranteed salary, you are allowed to sell vehicles. If you so happen to sell a car, the commission you make on the deal is then reduced by the guarantee salary you are already making. So at the end of the day you really don't make as much as you would have imagined. Then on top of that the dealership always arranges the numbers of the deal in a manor that favors them as makes it almost seem like the dealership had taken a loss on the deal. Which means you only get the minimum amount on the deal, which is $100 and your lucky if you don't have to share the deal with a veteran associate that helped you complete the sales process even if they did nothing.
At the end of the day they hire about 30 people with the intent of keeping maybe 5. No matter what it's a win win situation, even if you only sell 1 or 2 cars in a month they still made there money back. On top of whatever commission that is made on the deal, the dealership charges a $699 dealership fee, that goes directly to them. So when they say there losing money, you know there full of shit. They normally fire the new hirers prior to 3 months as to pay unemployment benefits, great scam, huh!
So I played the game as long as I could. Because of my charismatic free spirited personality I had made a lot of friends at the dealership. Even though I was liked by my peers as usual I was not so liked by some of my Superiors. One guy in particular really fucking hated me. David Peralta really had a hard on for me, allow me to explain. One day this guy offers me a ride as I'm walking to the dealership about 100 meters away. So I get in his car, he has his music blasting looking all cool with his shades ,we park at the dealership, the experience lasted an entire 30 seconds. Then another time he see's me sitting at a cubicle while in the middle of a deal with a customer in the Finance Office. He stops right in front of me and with the most serious of faces says to me " say one fucking word and I'll fire you on the spot". What was this fucking guy's problem I don't know.
The only reason I could think is that he was so pissed off at me was cause I once told the internet manager about my customer walking out the dealership after Mr Peralta did not want to allow the customer to make monthly payments of $400 instead of $408. My customer a Colombian dentist who was with his wife and little girl literally extended his hand to shake Peraltas hand and said $400 and we have a deal and Ahole jus said No. This guy disliked me so much that he was willing to allow me and the dealership lose a deal over $8 a month. So after the guy walked out of the showroom heated I told the internet manager and he couldn't believe it so went to speak to the general manager to review the deal. The GM immediately said he take that deal and they had the customer return and gave him the deal he wanted. I suppose I made him look bad by speaking up, but what was I to do. Instead of helping me to get sales he was actually causing me to lose them, makes no sense I know. People have issues what can I tell you.
Because they knew I was an honest guy with integrity they love to fuck with me when I had a customer, at least that's how I see things. Whenever I was working on a deal and would hand in a customers application, the managers would always give me payment plans that that were sometimes were double the amount of what the actual payment would be. I would give them this look like, you can't be fucking serious. You really don't expect me to take this Bullshit payment plan to the customer. But that's the whole thing that people don't understand about dealerships, the do what they want. And if your sucker and just accept what they tell you then you will get stuck with the deal they want and not the deal that works best for you.
Even with my defiance, I was still able to get a few deals after my first month. This unfortunately was not enough to keep my ass from getting fired, which happened in very low class style by who else but David Peralta. The guy actually set me up and pretended to take me to the finance office to check if I had gotten payed on a deal that I split with a guy in the Honda building. Since I sold Nissans, my goal of course was to sell them the Nissan Maxima that they were interested in. But thinks to who else Mr Dickhead David Peralta, my customer was totally disgusted with him and so was I. Not only was he not willing to negotiate with her, he actually recommended I take her to the Honda building and see if she finds something there that better suits her. In the dealership world this is almost equivalent to say a person coming into a church interested in becoming a Christian and the Pastor telling them Christianity isn't for them and suggest that they consider Islam and then walks then over to the Mosque.
This was a complete kick in my balls since the goal of any manager is to sell his makers vehicle which in this case was Nissan but instead cock blocks my sell and has me take them to Honda. This is a whole other level of fuckery this scumbag was playing on me. Even though I could have tried to sell my customer a Honda, I decided to take her to a veteran Honda sales rep as to not waste any more of her time since it was already the second time she had come to the dealership. Plus I was not expert in Honda and it would have been way to complicated to figure out where all the Honda's are left in the garage.
The next day I called the customer to see if she ended up getting something and of course she got a Honda Accord. She thanked me for all my help and taking her to the Honda rep. She then admitted to me that the payments on the Accord where about the same is it would have been for a Nissan Maxima. The problem was not the price it was dealing with this asshole of a manager and she told me exactly that. Then Mr Ahole ask me if the customer bought a Honda, I told him she did. Then he acted all nice and wanted to make sure I got my $50 split on the deal since as usual no profit was made, so that meant the $100 minimum to be shared between me and the Honda rep.
I thought it was funny how all of a sudden he was concerned that I got payed. But this was bullshit and I knew it. He brought me into the office, then had me to wait to supposedly get the login for that particular computer. He then returned with an evil smirk on his face along with the General Manager to tell me I didn't get paid on that deal and wouldn't be getting paid on any other deals, Your fired. Actually I ended up getting paid on the deal. I went to the rep and he offered me $50 cash as to get credit for a complete sale since Sales people get bonuses and incentives from the manufacturer depending on the quantity of cars they sale per month.
I was a bit surprised that I got fired, since I knew I had done better then most of the reps during training and had at least justified me continuing at the dealership. While feeling the initial shock, I had veteran guys come up to me and tell me that during there meeting they fought to keep me there. A few of them told me it was bullshit and I should talk to the top GM and ask him to transfer to another department. Since the dealership is an auto mall they have several buildings on the lot for each manufacturer who's vehicles they sell. So I spoke to the GM Mike and he gave me a few options so I agreed to be transfer to Kia. I should have selected to go to Used Cars instead of Kia, but I made my decision and was going to live with it. I obviously knew I was just making time before the inevitable would happen. But before this happened , I decided to try to beat the system at its own game.
(Hanging out with the Kia Hamster)
Trying to sell KIA's was as successful as trying to sell meat to a raw vegan. My first weekend started off great, I made 2 sells sadly one of which was to an 84 year old sweet half senile Jamaican woman who claimed I looked like her English grandfather, go figure. She was dropped off at the dealership by a church friend, who left her in my hands to take care of her. Her children who handled her affairs didn't even know she was looking to purchase a vehicle since they would not have approved. She told me she worked as a family psychologist in a major hospital in New York called Downstate. Her purpose for purchasing the vehicle was so she could volunteer at her church to help families in need of therapy. Since she had such a beautiful soul I wanted to help her even though it would be a bit risky for her to drive. I took her on a test drive in Kia Forte. She wasn't the best driver but we survived. I gave her application to the Kia managers who were much easier to deal with then the Ego Maniac Managers in the Nissan building. I told them the situation and they pushed the deal thru.
That sell really made me feel like a piece of shit and worse was that the finance guy sold every type of unnecessary insurance and other bullshit products that she didn't need, which then almost doubled her monthly payments. The woman didn't even know how much money she had in her back account since her children handled her money. So he had me call the bank hotline on her behalf and find out how much money she had in her checking account out so he could tell her how much to put down, really shitty. Then over the weekend it seemed as if the finance guy started growing a conscious and came to me saying I don't know if we should have sold her the car. In truth he was only feeling guilty in case she was to get into an accident or the family were to sue the dealership for negligence and he didn't want to be held liable. So he was just trying to cover his own ass after raping the woman.
After this weekend everything went downhill. Strangely enough the guys at Nissan even Peralta were really nice to me and wanted to know how I was doing in Kia. I for the life of me will never understand people, one minute they want to stick there dick up your ass and the next they want to give you a blow job.
The Kia building was so dead on a usual day there were 15 salesmen and 1 or 2 customers, the entire day. The veterans use to have hiding spots in the parking lot and would magically pop out of nowhere like vampires whenever a customer arrived. The only other hope of getting customers was thru internet leads which was only given by this fat fuck ex cop from New York named Bruce. Or you had the option try contacted previous customers and try to hustle them to get a new car or have them turn in there lease early for a lease on a new vehicle. Sometimes this works but its such a pain in the ass and really not worth the effort most of the time.
(This is Bruce, a fat hamster looking motherfuck#$%$)
Bruce was a really pain in the ass and the majority of the sales guys couldn't stand him and wanted nothing to do with him. Luckily for Bruce, though he was a complete moron, he had job security because he was friends with someone in power. Since the Automall had several buildings for different manufacturers, Mr Bill was able to bounce around from one building to the next after eventually getting fired from all the different building in the automall. I avoided Bruce as much as possible, as his only purpose in life seem to be annoy and get the better of people. Well he was sadly mistaken if he thought was going to get the better of me.
I spent most of my time at Kia bullshitting with some of the reps, usually discussing different conspiracy theories. The other part of my day was spent most days hanging out with a Dominican guy they just hired name Franklin, who was a friend of a big guy in the Automall and happened to be under house arrest. Since the Automall does background checks, its only thru knowing someone that you can work there with ankle bracelet. Franklin even though claimed to have experience selling cars, he really did not. His English was also a bit limited, so I passed his Kia certification tests for him. Even with my help I couldn't protect him from Bill, who would thrash the guy on a regular basis, but Franklin was to scared to stand up to him because he didn't want to get fired. I on the other hand don't have this fear and eventually I had it out with Bill.
On one occasion I had an altercation with Bill trying to steal one of my customers. There are certain rules in the dealership, one of which is that internet sales people cannot take walk in customers. I had a customer in the showroom that I was trying to work a deal for but I was not able to give her the numbers she wanted and she got irate. My managers were of little help and somehow Mr Bill stuck his fat ass in the mix and got my customers info and told them he would work the deal. The thing is he had no power or right to the what he did and he was overriding the Desk, which is the managers. He was also disliked by the managers who told all the reps never to accept final numbers on a deal from Bill.
When I saw him trying to still my customer I obviously got pissed off cause this was a clear slap in my face. Since he was clearly in the wrong and the customer was still in the showroom I went to Jomo, a short stocky Jamaican who was one of the Kia Managers. Since Jomo had just started his shift, he had no clue what was going on. After the customer left I went the room where Bruce works. So this fat fuck had the balls to ask me why I went to Jomo. So my response to him was very clear, "Your not my Boss". Bruce didn't like my response, so he asked me again and this time I responded in a much louder tone of voice and said "Your Not My Fucking Boss". So like the little bitch that he is, he want running to Jomo to tell you what I said.
So Jomo took us both in the office with no one around and started asking what the fuck was going on. So I began to tell him what Mr Bruce had been attempting to do. Of course he tried to play it off as if he had done nothing wrong by trying to steal my customer. So I told Jomo that I did tell Bruce to fuck off cause the reality is as much as he wants to think himself a boss he is not, so I was just stating the obvious. After saying this in a few others things I can't recollect, this fat bastard came charging at me from 10 meters away like a Bull. As he came charging, I wasn't sure if he was going to try to drop me, so I took a half step as he stopped an inch from my face and began barking like a dog, rah rah rah rah rah rah.
Then Jomo lost it and in his thick Jamaican accent was like "what the fuck is going on here, this is my fucking store, I'm the boss". So after Jomo calm down, I began to tell Bruce that nobody in the Auto Mall liked him. And he was like "oh no that's not true, he began to name like 3 people, lol. Again in a very harsh voice I said to him, Nobody likes you. Then I told him if I would to take a sheet of paper and go around the auto mall to get signatures of people that didn't like Bruce I would have to take several sheets of paper with me. This was pretty much the beginning of the end for me even though I had said things that everyone wanted to say but no one else had the balls to do so.
It was around this time that I decided it was time to move on to plan B. What was plan B you might ask, Uber. Aside from the drama with Bruce I was now officially on what is call the bucket. After your 3 month trainee guarantee is up, now your income primarily comes from Sales. If you don't have sales, the dealership still must pay your an hourly wage. Once this happens your officialy in the bucket, this means that you owe the dealership money and they will take what owe from your future sales. Of course I was not down with this and since I'm a vig master and learn to use the system to my advantage I had a better plan.
I knew that I wasn't going to leave that shitty dealership without getting a vehicle from them. Even though I didn't want car payments, I still needed income and wanted to be independent. But with all the drama going on in my house, I moved out of my house and rented a room from an old pain in the ass Colombian woman that I sold a car too.
One of the benefits of being out of the country for so long was that my credit score improved since all the delinquent accounts I had previously had finally dropped off my credit report after so much time passing. This meant I had a good enough credit score to finance something. What I didn't have was money for a down payment. But this was no problem, since I worked for the dealership. So in my 39th birthday, I smoked a joint before heading to work and decided to buy myself a birthday gift. I went into Used cars that day and told them I wanted a car, the guy said go outside check out the inventory and let me know which one you want.
It all seemed so easy, but it was. I decided that I wanted something comfortable for me and for my customers since I knew the purpose of the vehicle was to make money driving Uber. So I picked out the Rogue, with all the bells and whistles. Even though it had 50,000 miles, it was in pristine condition. The vehicle was going for $22,000, the dealership gave it to me for $15,000 and even got Nissan to finance me by lying about my income and how long I had worked there. Not only that but I didn't have to put any money down and my first payment wasn't due for 45 days. This gave me sufficient time to sort out my living situation and try to make some income working for Uber.
Another great benefit about working in the dealership is that there is really no supervision. So I began disappearing during the afternoon for 1 or 2 hours to drive Uber, just to get a feel for it. I did this for several weeks unto I started venturing to Miami and South Beach to test the waters. The waters appear to be very good and I quit the dealership after making $240 in one day.
After a few weeks of driving Uber I decided to rent a room in a very strange hostel style house in Miami owned by a Brazilian woman that reminded me of my deceased Grandma. The house was a bit strange I have to admit but had character and shit load of clutter and Catholics relics. In the house lived 2 Colombians, a Peruvian, an American, a German family and Italian guy that I shared my room with for the first 2 weeks. Also my grandma look alike had a funny looking dog with no hair and a bunch of puppies in the backyard. The room was way overpriced at $700 a month, I had been sleeping in my car the last few days and considered doing that but then realized I need a place to stay. I didn't make sense to share a room for so much money but after all this is Miami and she looked my granny, sucks to be a sentimental bitch sometimes. Plus I had a balcony and a backyard to smoke weed, so game on.
(Before I went vegetarian I gave some bacon to the dog, needless to say she loved it)
(These were the adorable puppies my Brazilian landlord kept in the back yard)
The house was located in a very central part of Miami near Biscayned Blvd and 77th Street. The area was a mix between an up and coming yuppy artistic gentrified neighborhood and and little Haiti. At the beginning I was doing very good, I was able to make $1000 a week if I hustled. I learned where many of the best spots were to pick up people, what the best times where, etc. In actuality as weird as it might sound, some of my best customers were black people from the hood. Since many people were afraid to drive around Little Haiti and other ghetto parts of Miami, there was a good opportunity to make some money right in the area. Many times I would just keep my Uber or Lyft app open until I received a call.
Honestly speaking Black people were some of my best customers and rarely gave me any shit. The biggest issue was either white privileged people that treating me like I was there fucking chofer and expected me to put there luggage in the car for them and kiss every inch of there stinky snobby asses.
I had not been doing as well driving for Uber as I hoped even, partly due to getting sick while living in a bizarre shared house due to poor air quality coming from the dusty air ventilation. I did have a weeks that I made $1000 in a week but when you consider the hours I was driving, the money in gas and the miles I was putting on my car it wasn't looking like a win win situation. The other reasons I was even making $1000 was because I was picking up lowlife low vibrational drunken people from bars and clubs in Downtown Miami and South Beach.
Driving Uber was definitely an adventure. I would leave my house many mornings around 4am hoping to catch someone heading to the Airport. Its definitely an adventure and you never know how your day will go, who you will meet and where you will end up. I did like the adventure part of it and the independence of working my own schedule. Even though I got sick for 2 weeks I was still able to work enough hours to make around $500 a week while being sick.
Even though there was money to be made, deep down I really was not happy. I was very sad and lonely even though I wasn't a lone in the house. Since I hate the system and matrix, there is really no amount of money that can satisfy my soul. Plus being in Miami compared to the more laid back suburban I was living in prior was very stressful. I am also very sensitive to different energy and in Miami there is a shit loud of crazy negative energy, especially in the neighborhood I was living in. Even though my house and the surrounding blocks were safe enough, the general area was still very ghetto and very fucked up.
Many times while driving late at night I would see the sad reality of life that makes me hate this world even more. I would prostitutes on the corners and crackheads riding there bicycles on the opposite side of the street, sad. Plus I had my own personal trauma and flashbacks to deal with from the years I lived in Miami when I worked for Financial firms in Aventura and Downtown Brickell. I also had a 6 month period 10 years earlier while being married to my Colombian ex wife who I was going to bring to the States until her Visa got cancelled and revoked (Oh that was is a very long story that I'll get into one day). That was probably the worst moments of my life. While living on my own in this 1 bedroom apartment in Miami I had found out she was fucking around behind my back. This put me in a very dark dark place and I became somewhat suicidal, several times contemplated throwing myself from the 12th floor of my apartment building. Even though I was at my financial peak in 2006 working for Bank Hapoalim the largest Israeli private bank, I was miserable.
(Driving Uber in Miami)
(Miami, Florida)
So Miami has always given me a lot of mixed emotions. Plus driving in Miami, even though the money was good was extremely stressful. The traffic sucks, the roads are shit, the customers, no matter how much weed I smoked I was very stressed out, plus getting sick only 2 weeks after moving to Miami. Also the navigation system sucks, so as your trying to hustle and make money your gps is sending you in 10 different directions.
I had few instances were I had to threaten customers to call the police on them or just drive like a maniac until they were ready to get out of my fucking car. My goal was to drive for a year, save as much money as possible and never come back to the states again. For many people it would seem like a wonderful life to drive a nice SUV around Miami and South Beach, work your own hours and be your own boss, but not for me. The deep loneliness and just being disturbed by the chaotic toxic world I was experiencing around me was beginning to be to much for me. It didn't matter that I was making ok money, that I had a nice car that my customers appreciated. For me, none of that shit mattered and represented enslavement which was the opposite of what I was desiring. Plus how could I be ok when everything around me was so fucked up. I could I just ignore the poverty, the filth, the disgusting behavior of humans on drugs and alcohol.
It's not to say I didn't come across some good souls but for me the overall experience wasn't very pleasant.
My deep feelings of feeling out of place in this sick society was further confirmed after a heavy mushroom trip that I experienced while living in this house. During this trip I felt the strong presence of dark entities and for some reason I had a lot of Portuguese conversation going on in my head which is bit strange but maybe not so strange since I spent a year in Brazil and the owner of the house was Brazilian. Thank God the little hairless rat dog was around to cuddle with me when I was coming down from this heavy trip. I also saw visions of my family that were very disturbing and was the case when I took mushrooms.
I was able to make some nice connections with the Italian guy and Peruvian guy. Actually the Italian was in many ways a carbon copy of myself. He had lived all around the world as a chef but was never satisfied. He was a very humble and spiritual guy and we had some nice chats about being content with oneself. As humans we have the tendency to always look for happiness outside of ourselves but the truth is true happiness is only within oneself when we connect with the Source. Everything he said was true and it was no coincidence how and why I ended up in this rather strange yet homey abode in Miami. I'm sentimental and wanted to stay in the house just cause of the lovely people and cute dogs but I knew it was time to move on. Plus after getting sick I knew it was impossible to live there because of the air quality and the rent was to expensive, so I decided to move out just after 1 month.
But in that 1 month there were signs that the Universe was conveying to me aside from the mushroom trip. One sign was me smashing my Passenger side rear view mirror one evening on my way home. After Miami I moved back north close to where my family was living. I moved in with a Peruvian lady that was friends of a Haitian friend of mine who also happened to be my dealer. The rent was $200 cheaper a month and it was a much quitter area. But still things were not going how I had hoped. Now I was driving in a different area and not doing as well financially. Then I got a flat tire on my brand new $700 specialty tires. Then I got another flat tire the next week while driving a customer to the airport at 6am in the morning. So it was just one thing after another.
Then my father called me to ask me if I had slashed all the tires of the 3 cars they have in there home, which of course I did not. So yes, I was getting sick of being in the states again. The other part of the story I will share in my next post is the family drama that occurred while I was still living with my family after my return to the States.
So when my boy Marcus suggested moving to Toronto, I was like sure, why the fuck not. I mean what did I have to lose, nothing. So when the accident occurred I was like fuck man doesn't anything ever work out for me. But the accident was just what I needed to happen. Cause the signs were already there, the writing was on the wall but I was choosing to ignore it. Now I just smashed my car, was now not going to be able to work for 2 weeks while the car was being repaired, plus rent was coming up, the car payment, insurance, cell phone and everything else.
(I meet Marcus while we were volunteering in a hostel in Salvador, Bahia - he's the little black dude)
I had only been back in the states for 8 months after spending 28 months in South America and nothing appeared to be working in my favor. I was trying to live in the matrix so that I could make money so that I wouldn't have to live in the matrix, but even this wasn't working out. I was feeling the same way I felt back in 2013 when I left to South America.
No matter what I did, it always seemed that I was always destined to leave the US once again.
The accident really put things in perspective. I went thru all the different possible scenarios in my head to what I should I do. While debating my future, I took my car into my insurance company for repair. I figured the car was going to have to get fixed one way or another. Even though the thought of going to Toronto did interest me, the reality is I probably would have been miserable. Being honest with myself I hate cold weather with a passion which is a big reason why I had stayed in South Florida for some 12 years even though I was bored to death.
But since I would have been with a good friend, I was at least willing to give it a shot, plus I had a nice car. Now with the accident, I no longer had the money to make this move. So I really started asking myself, what do you want. While analyzing my options I decided to take a look at the workaway website just out of curiosity. I'm not sure how exactly I came across this particular profile in Malaga, Spain but the project was in a rural area away near a small town and away from the city. I realized this is what my soul had been longing for, nature.
I told my Peruvian landlady Evelyn about it and immediately she says "Do it, Alejandro, don't even think about it just go for it. She said forget this place, your not happy hear, your young Malaga is beautiful, start your life over again. She spoke to me with such conviction that it made my decision that much easier. So just like that once again as in 2013 I said fuck it, where going to Spain. I decided to just drop everything and buy the ticket, regardless of the consequences.
(On the train in Berlin on my way to catch my flight to Spain)
So in a weeks time I was off on my first trip to Europe. All the stuff that had been stressing me out was irrelevant. Maybe I appear a bit irresponsible and care free or care less, all of which might be true. But I am true to myself, it's the only way I know to be. The worst thing in this life in my opinion is to be a coward and not take risk. What did I have to lose?? Money?? a perfect credit score? The fear of the bank repossessing my car which I had only made one payment one.
Fuck it, I say life is too short to be kept in bondage and tied down by material possessions. One can always recover material possessions, money comes and goes. But your life, how and what you spend your time doing is what has true meaning and value. Also who you spend your time with is also extremely important. Though I encountered many difficulties on this trip, I never regret my decision and would do it all over again. And the thing is although I was not fully prepared for everything I would encounter, the experience has taught me what I need to know and how to be better prepared in the future. Nothing is in vain, everything happens for a reason, even the strangest of incidents or random encounters. All of it can be used for your benefit and blessing if you decide to interpret life in this matter.
Rather then seeing my random accident as some great disaster that ruined my life and credit I see it as a Blessing in disguise. The experiences I had in this trip have all help to make me a more conscious and better person. There is no amount of money in the world that can give me what my life experiences. My travel experiences have allowed me to see and experience a level of humanity that I would have never experienced if I just played it safe and stayed in my comfort zone.
So if you ever find yourself in a complicated predicament don't get to down on yourself. Life is like a stream of water that at times goes off course because the terrain changes and you might hit a dry patch but the water always finds a way to keep flowing. So we too must be like water and adjust ourselves accordingly and nothing is ever as bad as it seems.
(One moment in Miami next moment in Pizarro, Spain)
I hope you have enjoyed my little story, thank you for taking the time to read it. I look forward to sharing my next adventure with you. Until then take care and Stay Blessed.
One Love